hopes with such happy, radiant eyes, and know how soon will come to her that "saddest pain of all—to grasp the thing we long for and find how it can fail us."
Up and down she walks, searching for sweetmeat pebbles and sugary stones, and when she finds none—the water running high and close to the grassy ground—she stoops and, dipping her little fingers, she lifts them, wet and dripping, to her longing lips.
"It isn't vewy sweet," she said.
Poor little Tot! Down the stream she came to a ford, and the shallow water had left stones and pebbles bare. Big and little, and half size; white and yellow, and brown and gray.
Here was richness at last. All in a minute Tot's little, nibbling, crunching teeth went on edge on a perverse, grating pebble that sternly refused to be nibbled or crunched. Another and another and another she tried.
"Pwobably," she thought, "they has to be cwacked dus 'ike nuts." And she proceeded to crack, not the stones, but her own little, eager, blundering fingers, instead. O stony, stony-hearted stones and pebbly-hearted pebbles! Tot's cup of bitterness seemed to flow over. She stood up, sobbing. A sudden sense of desolation oppressed her.
"I wis' I was at home wiv dwandma. I wis,' oh, I wis' I hadn't tum!" she sobbed.
Her only thought, now, was to get home. But, first, what do you think she did? She filled her bit of a pocket full of pebbles for grandmamma to crack; then the little weary feet stumbled back again over the weary way.
"My feet's is detting so heavy," she sighed, "and I fink I's detting tired."
Tot was crying piteously now, and no one heard. All alone, mamma's baby, who had never been alone before in all her short cherished life. All alone with the croaking frogs and lonesome crickets. Hark! what was that? A roll of wheels and the clatter of a horse's hoofs.